Daily Archives: July 26, 2019

Commercial salmon trollers in Southeast can expect a region-wide fishing closure for coho salmon in August. One part of the region is already being shut down because of low coho numbers. But a second king salmon opening is likely to keep the fleet on the water. Trollers have been targeting coho and chum salmon since the end of the five day opening for king salmon at the beginning of July. >click to read< 21:29

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After sitting vacant for over a decade, an historic mill on the waterfront is getting a new life as a commercial shipyard.,,,“We saw the site come up a few years back and we saw the potential with it,” said Michael Quinn who runs Shoreline Resources with his father Charlie. Currently the father and son own Quinn Fisheries, which has six commercial fishing vessels; Standard Marine Outfitters, a vessel supply company; and East Coast Fabrication, a ship repair company.,,, Mayor Jon Mitchell, “Establishing a shipyard at this site gives the port an increased capacity to service the fishing industry, the offshore wind industry, and others.” >click to read< 20:37

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Dean Bowling has pulled in thousands of crabs from thousands of crab pots during his decades-long career as a commercial fisherman. This week, for the first time in his life, he caught one that caused him to stop what he was doing and call his daughter, Jillian. “‘You’re not gonna believe what I caught in the trap today,'” Jillian Bowling recalled her dad saying. “So I said, ‘Send me a picture’ and he sent me a picture and I could not believe my eyes. I called him immediately and said, ‘Do you know what you have? That’s amazing. That’s one in a billion.'” >click to read< 17:41

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A proposal is making a splash in Louisiana shrimp boats. Delcambre shrimper Terral Melancon tells me he’s losing money to imported shrimp. “I catch that shrimp, I can’t even get 80 cents (a pound),” said Melancon. “They flood the market so cheap our shrimp is worth nothing because this country is so flooded with the imported shrimp” Now Lousiana’s Lieutenant Governor wants to tax imported seafood at 10 cents per pound, but foreign seafood isn’t just cutting into fishermen’s profits. Video, >click to read< 16:14

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The federal government has stalled on a plan to break one company’s monopoly on a lucrative Atlantic fishery by awarding part of the quota to an Indigenous group, after a disastrous attempt last year that led to an investigation by the federal ethics watchdog. Ottawa announced a year ago that it would choose a new licence holder for 25 per cent of the Arctic surf clam quota in the spring of 2019, to begin harvesting clams in January 2020. That has not happened, and the office of Fisheries Minister Jonathan Wilkinson now says there is no timeline on the process. >click to read< 14:02

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“It’s a big deal because it’s a $2.2 Billion project. That is, to date, the largest private sector project in the state’s history. Bigger than the casinos in the state, bigger than Gillette Stadium, or you can name any of the skyscrapers in Boston, that is a big, big project and it’s being deployed from here,” New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell said Thursday during his weekly appearance on the Barry Richard Show. “It’s not even clear to me that Vineyard Wind understands what the hang-up is. We’ve said, ‘look, if the hang-up has something to do with commercial fishing, we in New Bedford would be happy to play a mediated role.’ >click to read< 12:28

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The empire strikes back! That would be the Maine coast lobster empire.,,, Last Sunday, lobstermen, their friends and families gathered on the pier in Stonington to let loose about regulations, bureaucrats and the horse they rode in on. They came from all over the Downeast coast, several hundred strong, and stood in a baking sun for two hours, first to bear witness to the shortcomings of federal research and then to listen to a star-studded roster of Maine politicians pledge their support for the lobster industry. >click to read< 11:08

From the Legislature: Lobsters and Right Whales, Rep. Allison Hepler – >click to read<

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Just a few months after she was born, Zachary and Stacey Donnell tucked their daughter, Norah, into her stroller, and took her out for her first foray on a lobster boat. She started spending more time on the boat when she was 5. “We’d go out as a family,” her mother, Stacey, said. Fast forward a few years, and these days, Norah, now 11, is a young entrepreneur and lobsterwoman, with four years as a student fisher under her belt. With her father’s help, she fishes 30 traps from her 25-foot lobster boat, Old Memories, out of Wells Harbor. She has a business, “The Lobster Peddler,” >click to read< 10:35

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The small GPS devices, which cost a couple of hundred dollars, transmit an alert message using satellite frequencies to NOAA and the U.S. Coast Guard. The U.S. Coast Guard urges the user to register the beacon at beaconregistration.noaa.gov. Beacon registration is free and there are no monthly fees associated. According to the NOAA, PLBs are portable units that operate much the same as EPIRBs or ELTs. These beacons are designed to be carried by an individual person instead of on a boat or aircraft. >click to read<

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The night of November 14th, 2018 was stormy off the coast of Maine. Along the coast people battened down the hatches, curled up on the couch with a blanket, a book, and a hot beverage. But 60 miles off the coast of Rockland, Maine the crew of the Aaron & Melissa II were working hard to keep their 76-foot steel dragger afloat. The seas had built to twenty feet and the wind whipped the rain and sea spray violently across the deck in 50 knot winds. For most of the night the pumps kept up with the inundation of seawater that came across the decks and found its way into the bilge, but as morning neared and the storm raged on the sea began to win, outpacing the pumps and the crew. The Aaron & Melissa II was sinking. >click to read< 08:33

Coast Guard rescues 4 fishermen 60 miles off Maine coast – The Coast Guard rescued four fishermen Wednesday after abandoning their boat off the coast of Rockland, Maine. >click to read<

NILS STOLPE: The New England groundfish debacle (Part IV): Is cutting back harvest really the answer?

While it’s a fact that’s hardly ever acknowledged, the assumption in fisheries management is that if the population of a stock of fish isn’t at some arbitrary level, it’s because of too much fishing. Hence the term “overfished.” Hence the mandated knee jerk reaction of the fisheries managers to not enough fish; cut back on fishing. What of other factors? They don’t count. It’s all about fishing, because fishing is all that the managers can control; it’s their Maslow’s Hammer. When it comes to the oceans it seems as if it’s about all that the industry connected mega-foundations that support the anti-fishing ENGOs with hundreds of millions of dollars a year in “donations” are interested in controlling. Read the article here